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Poets have to keep pushing, pushing, against the darkness, and write their way out of it as well.

Anne Waldman

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Anne Waldman
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: April 2
Poet
Writer
Millville
New Jersey
Wells
Well
Writing
Poets
Way
Pushing
Poet
Darkness
Write
Keep

More quotes by Anne Waldman

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I'm drawn to the magical efficacies of language as a political act.
Anne Waldman
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[Jack] Kerouac looking at the fellaheen worlds. Looking at other cultures. Welcoming it, curious. Really stepping outside his own limited, whatever that narrow world was. It's amazing to think we can do it. We can have that same kind of trajectory of mind.
Anne Waldman
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I am a poet, bard, scop, minnesinger, trobairitz who is driven by sound and the possibilities for vocal expression, the mouthing of text as well as intentionality or dance on the page.
Anne Waldman
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I think for me in terms of this kind of dichotomy you have to hold the sense of negative capability in your mind - which is Keats line about being able to hold two different ideas 'without any irritable reach after fact or reason.'
Anne Waldman
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When I look at my life there are these streams, these things that have continuity from the fifties to now.
Anne Waldman
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There is a pretty interesting document called 'action writing.' Which is not all about spontaneity and first thought, best thought,' but a certain kind of attention to the smallest increments of the phonemes of language, The kind of power of connection, what he is able to do with language.
Anne Waldman
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Your compassion travels beyond your own inner circle. And then you breathe out an alternative version where you mentally and emotionally and psychologically purify the poisons. So indeed, the generative idea is in the crux of this practice and of my propensity toward poetry, which is a practice of the imagination.
Anne Waldman
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We had much more imagery from Vietnam war. The media was not controlled. The storyline, the master narrative was not controlled. I thin it was some those images really radicalized people and shifted things to some extent. And the Viet Cong also, their tenacity.
Anne Waldman
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Literal thousands of Americans taking to the road and getting into that green automobile and just going. At the same time there is real incredible work [of art] that comes out of it. Never forget that.
Anne Waldman
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The beat literary movement is strong because of those very challenging and individual relationships and styles and contention and so on. So I just feel blessed by this kind of opportunity that came from it. It was a kind of seed.
Anne Waldman
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The whole red state/blue state thing is very interesting. Watching that shift over the years.
Anne Waldman
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The formal stuff feels old and windy. Not to say you shouldn't know prosody. But it's a wonderful time for exploratory poetics. Contemporary poets are inventing all kinds of wild, complex shapes for poetry, as we see. It's a wonderful time, less ego-centered.
Anne Waldman
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There are energies that reside in each phone and phoneme. And we can release them.
Anne Waldman
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I get very upset when money is being cut and people can't visit the Grand Canyon.
Anne Waldman
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I remember being caught in this earthquake in Mexico City and having a sense of people coming before me, of being part of this lineage. I felt similarly when I went to India and South America.
Anne Waldman
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If I smashed the traditions it was because I knew no traditions. I'm the girl with the unquenchable thirst.
Anne Waldman
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Personally there is first: imagination second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.
Anne Waldman
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It's so rich as a trope - the whole idea of the road and it being in terms of language, being an active experience.
Anne Waldman
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I was not ever hitchhiking alone. I've done solo train trips but I've never driven myself alone.
Anne Waldman
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As a younger person you can come in through many, many gateways. It's like some huge Mandela. You can enter into this and get refreshed.
Anne Waldman